Old Dog or Not, Learn Something New

My 28-year-old Whirlpool washing machine is history. Bought with our first married-filing-jointly tax refund, it served us well for years… and years… and years. The appliance repairman came once or twice to replace a belt on the motor and enjoyed teasing me about having the only remaining “Harvest Gold” washing machine in town. Hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! Replace the belt when it breaks, but that machine just kept on running. Then this year it developed a little puddle of oily stuff underneath. It made a lot of noise when it ran, and it shook all over when running on its high-speed spin cycle.

Enter the new machine. A front-loading Kenmore (built by Frigidaire) that, while not super-high efficiency or super-high price, is much more efficient than the old machine. Its *slowest* spin speed is faster than the old machine’s fastest cycle. Being a front-loader, this one uses *drops* of water per load instead of the oceans required by the 1976 model.

My point in this random rambling? It is different. It will take some getting used to. I am still dropping clean laundry on the icky basement floor as I transfer things from washer to dryer. And even though I have a Big Birthday looming next week (I prefer to think of it as my “year of Jubilee”), I do not consider myself the proverbial “old dog” incapable of learning “new tricks”. I can master this machine. Hey, at age 39 I learned to play bass guitar for the church worship team. Education is a life-long adventure, and there are a lot of things I am looking forward to learning in my future.